Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Last week we went to Stratford, Ontario where we saw HAMLET, CAROUSEL and THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK. Which of course called to mind the 1959 film. It starred Millie Perkins, Shelly Winters, Joseph Schilakraut, Diane Baker and Richard Beymer and was a very respectful version of the Diary as directed by George Stevens..

As this was a very respectful version of the play.

I would like to think an updated version might seems less dated, but I fear the work is so iconic that no one can really touch it. It is probably the most powerful book I read as a child and perhaps even as an adult.

Did Anne's death two weeks before the camp's liberation do more to illustrate the horrors of the Nazis than her survival would have? Would the book have been published if she had lived? Would we treat it with such reverence? I hope so. What are your thoughts? Can the play be updated or is it untouchable? Could it be set in one of the many places where people must hide from horrific regimes?

Monday, June 29, 2015

The Nuns of
Sant’Ambrogio, a historical account of a nineteenth-century convent scandal
(which I bought partly for the title but which I’m having a hard time slogging
through) and The Golden Apples of the Sun,
a Ray Bradbury anthology—the original paperback that I purchased for 40 cents
back in 1961.

Who is your all-time
favorite novelist?

Who indeed? Of Mice
and Men is one of my all-time favorite novels, but I don’t know that
Steinbeck is my all-time favorite novelist. I admire Faulkner’s style (over
someone like, say, Hemingway), and I’ve certainly read most of his work (As I Lay Dying multiple times), but I
don’t know if he’s my favorite novelist, either. I used to read everything that
Kurt Vonnegut wrote, but I’m not as enamored of him as I used to be. My wife
just reminded me about Virginia Woolf, an author whose entire novelist canon I’ve
read and enjoyed (especially To the
Lighthouse).

What book might we be
surprised to find on your shelves?

Three Comrades by
Eric Maria Remarque because it is essentially and mostly a romance (as in “love
story”), something I don’t usually gravitate toward. (But I saw and loved the 1938
movie—co-scripted by F. Scott Fitzgerald—when I was about 12 and had to
get/read the book.)

Who is your favorite
fictional character?

I struggled with this one and could come up with no
satisfactory answer. I was thinking Odysseus, the original hero on a journey,
but not all of his qualities are admirable. Ditto Yossarian in Catch-22. I suppose I must have one, but
I don’t know who s/he is.

What book do you
return to?

Already mentioned Of
Mice and Men and As I Lay Dying
above. Maybe Stephen King’s It,
Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine—or Nightmares and Geezenstacks, a horror
anthology of short stories by Fredric Brown (the first and greatest
practitioner of what is now called “flash fiction”).

Bio: Anthony
Ambrogio, 66, life-long resident of Detroit (and environs) until January 2015,
when
we moved to Cape Cod. Major claim to fame: Married to poet-novelist Anca
Vlasopolos; two daughters. Minor claim to fame: numerous articles and
reviews in
periodicals like Midnight Marquee, Monsters from the Vault, and Video Watchdog. Strives for fiction-publication
credits but so far has only a very few short stories to show for it. (Photo attached.)

I wanted a fast-paced suspense novel for a recent trip and had never read one by Harlan Coben. I consulted lists and this one was near the top of every one. So despite having seen a French film version of TELL NO ONE, I picked it up. It did not disappoint except in several curious and informative ways. The book was written in 2001 and it leaned heavily on the ways computers were used and worked in that era. Because most of this is dated now, it took me out of the story several times. I am not sure if there is an equivalent technology that seemed so dated a few years later. In other words, if people talked about listening to the radio in a book written in 1930, it would not occupy so much space and it would not bring the story to a halt if read today.

So a good lesson here: do not base your story too much on current technology. Putting this aside, this was a pretty good thriller although there was no real attempt to have any character development or attention to setting. It was plot, plot, plot.

Beck, a pediatrician, and his wife, Elizabeth, have been together since childhood and have developed many rituals to celebrate aspects of that love. On one such celebration, the wife disappears. A serial killer is tried and convicted and eight years pass.

Suddenly, Beck receives a message that seems to be from his wife that says, "TELL NO ONE" at the end. Various forces come into play: cops, villains, the wife's family, Beck's family as this is all sorted out.

Clearly Coben has a gift for keeping the reader engaged. He knows how to twist the plot. His characters are likable, violence is mostly offstage. He is able to juggle a lot of plot strains pretty efficiently. A good summer read but not a book that will send me back to the shelves.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

nA
memoir of a woman in the WACs during WW2 and posted to Europe: “Molly’s War”

nThe
Swimmer

nA God
in Ruins

nAll
The Light We Cannot See

nThe
Guns of August

nAnd The
Mountains Echoed

nThe Secrets of Bletchley Park

Who is your
all-time favorite novelist?

For all his
“oeuvre” – probably James Cain

For one novel:
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

What book might
we be surprised to find on your shelves?

The King James
version of the Bible

Who is your
favorite fictional character?

It changes often, but right now I’m torn between Lisbeth Salander and Scarlett
O’Hara – actually, maybe they’re not so different after all…

What book do you
return to?

I really don’t return
to books once I’ve read them.

Plug:

My next release,
which should be toward the end of June, is a historical novella called The Incidental Spy. It’s about a German
refugee who is forced to spy on the Manhattan Project during its early years at
the U. of Chicago. It will be out in ebook on Stark Raving Press and also in
print, at all the usual suspects.

I’m reading Sebastien Japrisot’s Women in Evidence, a man’s life written in the voices of eight different women. I’m also reading Intimate Lies: The Story of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham
written by Graham’s son, Robert Westbrook. (It’s the book I’m reading
above.) I got interested in this book after reading Stewart O’Nan’s West of Sunset, a fictionalization of the last few years of Fitzgerald’s life when he worked in Hollywood and was involved with Graham.

Who is your favorite novelist of all times?

I
couldn’t narrow it down to more than about five and I’m all over the
map: Henry James, Anthony Trollope, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, Barbara
Pym, and (of course) Agatha Christie. But ask me tomorrow and my answers might be completely different.

What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?

Probably former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Never Again and Sarah Palin’s America by Heart.
Full disclosure: These were gag gifts from my husband. He annotated
them—heavily and hilariously—before he gave them to me. (I made it
through Never Again, but there’s not enough snarky commentary in the world to help me make it past page 37 of Palin’s word salad of a book.)

I find myself rereading Daphne du Maurier’s The Parasites
at least once every couple of years. It’s the story of three siblings
in continental Europe between the wars and in England after the war, and
it has a very complex narrative structure (all three seem to narrate
simultaneously). It was the first book for which I wrote an FFB
review. I’m sorry du Maurier has fallen so out of favor and, other than Rebecca, is not read much these days.

Bio:

I’m
married with three children. After 20 years in the corporate world as a
technical writer, I became a stay-at-home mom for a few years. Then,
over a decade ago, I returned to work as an aide in the public schools.
I currently work in a special ed classroom with severely-autistic
students. It’s a challenging job, but very rewarding. I love to read
across all genres, but mysteries are my favorite.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

I watched THE STATION AGENT again yesterday as I ironed my way into oblivion. And, I thought, I must have posted about that one before. And here is is from 2013.I swear Peter Drinkage doesn't look a day older.

No books on my nightstand because I don't read in bed, but on the table next
to my recliner in the living room are a paperback copy of STRIKE OF THE
MOUNTAIN MAN by William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone, which I'm currently
reading, and my Kindle, where John Hegenberger's CROSS EXAMINATIONS and
Peter Brandvold's ONCE MORE INTO THE BREECH are at the top of the digital
stack.

Who is your all-time favorite novelist?

All-time favorite novelist is really tough. If I have to pick one...Dashiell
Hammett. Broaden that out to all-time favorite writer (because he wrote even
fewer novels than Hammett) and the answer is Robert E. Howard.What book on your shelves might surprise us?

Book on my shelves that might be a surprise...also tough because people who
know me know that I read anything and everything. Maybe some romance novel
by Nora Roberts or Marsha Canham.

Who is your favorite fictional character?

Favorite fictional character...Conan the Cimmerian. With Benjamin J. Grimm a
close second.

What book do you return to?

Book I return to...THE SUN ALSO RISES. I've read the whole thing four or
five times and assorted scenes many times. And I've ripped off--I mean, paid
homage to--the ending on numerous occasions. But the piece of fiction I
really return to is Irwin Shaw's short story "Main Currents of American
Thought", which I reread every year or two.

Well, I've managed to weasel out of a definitive answer on almost
everything, haven't I?

A lifelong Texan, James Reasoner has been a professional
writer for nearly forty years.In that
time, he has authored several hundred novels and short stories in numerous
genres. Writing under his own name and various pseudonyms, his novels have
garnered praise from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the Los Angeles Times, as
well as appearing on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly
bestseller lists. Recently, he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award
from Western Fictioneers.He lives in a
small town in Texas
with his wife, award-winning fellow author Livia J. Washburn. His blog can be
found at http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com
.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Literally on my nightstand? None. I never read
in bed,. But here are a few of the library books on the shelf behind me in
the den: SIX AND A HALF DEADLY SINS by Colin Cotterill (Dr. Siri Paiboun);
TRIGGER WARNING by Neil Gaiman (halfway through these stories); BLOOD SWEEP by
Steven F. Havill (Posadas County, New Mexico); SLOW HORSES by Mick Herron; AFTER
THIS by Alice McDermott; THIEVES FALL OUT by Gore Vidal (as "Cameron Kay"); A
HAND REACHED DOWN TO GUIDE ME: Stories and a Novella by David Gates (I really
liked his previous books).

And some of my own books: GAME OF MIRRORS by Andrea
Camilleri (Insp. Salvo Montalbano); SONS OF SPARTA by Jeffrey Siger (Ch. Insp.
Andreas Kaldis); DEATH HAS AN ESCORT by Roger Torrey (pulp reprints); PLAGUE
SHIP and POSTMARKED THE STARS by Andre Norton (Solar Queen series), among many,
many others.

Who is your all-time favorite
novelist?

Now this one is impossible for me. I could probably
narrow it down to 25 or 10 but never one. And there are different authors
in different categories (and on different days). A few I would definitely
include (and I'd read anything they'd written, even the less good stuff)
are Dashiell Hammett, Evan Hunter/Ed McBain, Donald Westlake and Elmore
Leonard, Among current mystery writers I always look forward to (a
very long list) are Michael Connelly, Bill Crider, Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller,
Margaret Maron, Andrea Camilleri, Lawrence Block, Peter Robinson, Archer Mayor,
Colin Cotterill, John Harvey, Joe R. Lansdale, James Sallis and Lee Child, but
believe me, this only scratches the obvious surface. **I've been reading at least one short story a day for close to 20 years now
(you can do the math) and would add Chekhov and John O'Hara to my favorites
list. Among current mystery writers I would read any short story by
Brendan DuBois, Ed Gorman, Doug Allyn, Clark Howard or Terence Faherty, and
the late Edward D. Hoch was a favorite.

What book might we be surprised to find on your
shelves?

Good question. I have very eclectic taste so nothing
should surprise you, but how about Leon Edel's five volume biography of Henry
James or the DIARY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN ADAMS or Trollope's
Parliamentary/Palliser novels the SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME volumes?
Then there are hundreds of romantic suspense and paranormal romance novels, but
those belong to my wife Jackie.

I have so many hundreds of books waiting to be read that I
rarely reread, but when I do it will probably be a favorite like TIME AND AGAIN
(Jack Finney) or NEVERWHERE (Neil Gaiman) or THE STAND (Stephen King - yes, I
read it twice). There are plenty of favorite series that I have on my
shelves to reread someday, like Sjowall & Wahloo's Martin Beck series, or
McBain's 87th Precinct or Westlake/Stark's Parker or Frank McAuliffe's Augustus
Mandrell books.

Bio? For a long time I sold secondhand mystery
books. We'd travel to Britain every summer and scour the land for books,
which I'd ship home and sell by mail order during the year. I also had a
mystery fanzine (The Poisoned Pen) which I self-published in the
pre-computer days (late 1970s and the 1980s), and was a member of DAPA-EM (along
with such luminaries as Bill Crider, George Kelley and Rick Robinson) for many
years. My wife Jackie was a teacher and school administrator for 34
years. We're retired.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

This
is one of Simenon’s standalones, which I generally prefer to the more
formulaic Maigrets. A French family lives comfortably, if
claustrophobically, outside of town. The first person narrator is
twenty-one and works at the local hospital as a research assistant.
She’s having a rather prosaic affair with her employer, an older
scientist. Her younger brother is taking classes at the local college,
majoring in chemistry.

The
two siblings live with their parents in a state of constant tension.
The mother is an alcoholic, and goes on binges that the rest of the
family calls ‘novenas’. Her behavior seems to date from the beginning of
her marriage and has almost a formal structure to it. The tension of
her behavior is palpable throughout the story.

A
newly hired maid, a sexually obliging sort of girl, Manuela, from Spain,
brings some needed air into this hothouse. Both father and son begin
sleeping with her. Neither is satisfied with this arrangement.

When
Manuela disappears. it is unclear what has happened and the ambiguity
will either intrigue or annoy you. The ending is surprising, yet
fitting. This was not my favorite Simenon and yet it succeeded in
keeping my interest. Short novels stand a better chance of doing that.

you just don't like it. For me it is VEEP. Darn, I know the writing is top-notch, insightful, sharp, funny and yet I just fade out when this show comes on. I think it's because it dislikes all of its characters. It wears its cynicism on its sleeve. And the dialog seems the same from one character to another. And its also too similar from week to week. Yes Selena Meyers is a new character for TV-a woman who is both smart and incredibly foolish at the same time. And JLD is her usual funny, attractive self but darn, I just can't get on-board. The thought of such a wretched woman running the country--argh!

Having said that though, I am going to rewatch it with CC on. Sometimes I think it's speed defeats me.

What show now or in the past, that you knew was good, didn't attract you?

Monday, June 15, 2015

I met Phil 50 years ago this month in New Hope, PA, his hometown. I had just graduated from high school, he was going into his senior year in college at American University. Here we are at the zoo in Philly.

And when I think of the songs playing just then, this one always sticks in my mind. It may not be the greatest song of 1965 but it sort of summed things up for us.

Anca Vlasopolos has published a detective novel, a memoir, various short stories, over 200 poems, the poetry collections Penguins in a Warming World and Walking Toward Solstice, and the non-fiction novel The New Bedford Samurai.
She was born in 1948 in Bucharest, Rumania. Her father, a political
prisoner of the Communist regime in Rumania, died when Anca was eight.
After a sojourn in Paris and Brussels, at fourteen she immigrated to the
United States with her mother, a prominent Rumanian intellectual and a
survivor of Auschwitz. Anca is Professor Emerita of Wayne State
University, Detroit, Michigan, where she taught English and Comparative
Literature for 39 years. She is married to Anthony Ambrogio, a writer
and editor. They have two grown daughters, who are making their own way
in the world. You can read one’s blog, about beasts in a populous city.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

I am told that a debut novel from a tiny press' best chance of selling a few copies is from Amazon reviews. So if you have read CONCRETE ANGEL could you post a review? Thanks for your help in what a I knew what going to be a stressful period.

We heard a fabulous opening concert of the Great Lakes Chamber Musical Festival last night. Although the piece of music I was most looking forward to, Barber's Adagio for Strings, was a disappointment. The Emerson Quartet, who played the whole program brilliantly, played this piece in a way I'd never heard it before--without a string orchestra behind them.It seemed thin and too muted. After listening to several versions on you tube, I see the fault was mine.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Just to say that for years I've been haunting dusty
bookshops, some specialists in crime fiction. ( the best being in Hay-
on-Wye), trying to describe the plot of a book I read many years ago
from our local library but without remembering either the title or
author; and after just reading your latest blog there it is: perfectly
described, even with the head buried in the snow. 'Appleby's End'.

To the bookshop this afternoon to place an order. Will I like it? Not so
sure, but at last my quest is over.
Many Thanks
Michael

About Me

Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 125 stories that have appeared online, in print journals and in various anthologies. She is the author of two print novels CONCRETE ANGEL (2015) and SHOT IN DETROIT (2016)(Polis Books). CONCRETE ANGEL was nominated for an Anthony and Macavity Award in 2016. SHOT IN DETROIT was nominated for an Edgar Award and an Anthony Award in 2017. A collection of her stories I BRING SORROW AND OTHER STORIES OF TRANSGRESSION will appear in 2018.